In Store | Just in Time for SXSW, A Shoppable Home Away From Home

The lifestyle boutique Friends & Neighbors opens today in an East Austin bungalow.Credit Jackie Lee Young

For a certain type of girl during a certain stretch of the aughts, I Heart — the late, lamented subterranean NoLIta boutique housed in Sonic Youth’s former practice space — was more than a place to shop for night-out looks from under-the-radar designers; it was a second home of sorts, a spot for kicking back, listening to obscure dance records and reading ‘zines. That store’s owner, Jill Bradshaw, recently decamped to Austin, Tex., her old college stomping grounds. Now, just in time for the South by Southwest conference, she has joined forces with two more Brooklyn expats, the restaurateurs Greg Mathews and Jade Place Mathews, to open Friends & Neighbors, an equally convivial concept store housed in a residential bungalow in burgeoning East Austin.

Like an actual home, the boutique has different rooms designated for different purposes, and is optimized for lounging comfortably. The living and dining areas stock an array of artisan objects and accessories and mostly vintage clothing, while the bathroom houses natural beauty products from Fat and the Moon and Olo and the two bedrooms serve as a dressing area and rotating pop-up (the first will be a selection from emerging children’s wear designers). In the kitchen, a cafe overseen by the Mathewses (who run Austin’s Hillside Farmacy and Brooklyn’s El Diablo Tacos) and Mercedez Singleton (the former manager of Brooklyn’s Marlow & Daughters specialty market) will serve wine, beer, Stumptown coffee and snacks; Singleton has also curated a selection of hard-to-find gourmet drygoods — Persian blue salt, rhododendron honey, heirloom-wheat pasta — for purchase. Bradshaw — a sometime D.J., singer and bassist — will also oversee the store’s musical offerings; two parties for South by Southwest are on deck for this week (an event with New York’s Other Music will take place today, and another for NPR happens on Friday).

True to its name, Friends & Neighbors embodies Austin’s famously genial culture. “Everyone is just so nice here,” Bradshaw says. (The name had just been chosen when the resident of an adjacent house came over to introduce himself; he turned out to be an architect, and was hired on the spot to oversee the renovation.) The backyard has ample seating and a stay-as-long-as-you-like policy; on the horizon are open-to-the-public craft workshops and movie nights. And the store’s welcoming ethos extends to its selection of vintage fashion, in its range of both price points — Bradshaw promises that “a college student can come in and spend 15 or 20 dollars on that perfect vintage sweater or that great random pair of overalls” — and looks. “Whether your style is rockabilly or ’90s raver,” she promises, “there’s something for you here.”